


helpless

by imposterhuman



Series: pepperony drabbles [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Not Steve Friendly, POV Pepper Potts, Pepper Feels, Pepperony - Freeform, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Pepper Potts, Team Iron Man, Tony Feels, because tony needed a hospital after that fight, obviously, pepper is team iron man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 17:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: If murder were legal, Pepper would have stabbed Steve Rogers with one of her expensive heels and called it a day. If she was being honest, she could probably get away with it, illegal as it was. She had kickass lawyers.





	helpless

**Author's Note:**

> today's word- "steve"
> 
> im still crying about cw (in addition to being salty ofc)
> 
> you cant tell me that pepper wasnt at tonys side as soon as he got out of the hospital, break be damned
> 
> enjoy!

If murder were legal, Pepper would have stabbed Steve Rogers with one of her expensive heels and called it a day. If she was being honest, she could probably get away with it, illegal as it was. She had kickass lawyers.

 

As it wasn’t, she was holding Tony’s hand in his hospital bed instead of hunting Steve down. In the bed behind her, Jim laid paralyzed and sleeping. They had tried separating him from Tony, at first, but the man had put up so much of a fight that he almost injured his spine more. Pepper understood; the only thing that could drag her from Tony’s side was the literal apocalypse, and maybe not even that.

 

Tony was in a medically induced coma. His fake sternum had cracked along with several ribs, and the shards had punctured his lungs. He had frostbite, too, but minor enough that he wasn’t facing any permanent damage to his hands. Pepper knew of very few things that could cause those kinds of injuries; a super soldier, his shield, and the temperature in Siberia were on that list. 

 

Vision hadn’t told them much when he came back with a dead suit, an arm, a shield, and Tony himself. He had extrapolated from the state of the bunker that there had been a fight between Tony, Steve, and Barnes. Steve and Barnes had walked away. Tony had not. His suit was scrap metal, scraped and shredded in a way that Pepper knew didn't come without hurting the man inside it. Around the reactor, the metal was warped and dented in what looked like fingers of a certain metal arm. She threw up when she saw it, too reminiscent of her nightmares of Obadiah taking the reactor, all those years ago. Her turmoil over that, though, was nothing compared to when she stared at the dark reactor, cracked down the middle. The gash on the chest of the suit (cutting right through the heart, Pepper noticed in with a sick twist of her stomach) was a perfect match for the arc of Steve’s shield.

 

Pepper had trusted Steve to keep Tony safe on the field where she couldn’t. She had gone to him when the Avengers first formed, tears in her eyes about Tony’s reckless heroics, and he had  _ promised  _ her to keep him safe. Pepper had been willing to beg and bribe, but Steve had offered it with such earnest care that she couldn't help but to believe him (something she was regretting right then. How long had Steve been lying to her about protecting Tony? How long did it take for his care to turn into hatred? And hatred it was, to so callously break Tony). They had bonded over their love for an idiot genius, becoming friends of a sort. Steve had been Tony’s best friend, too (other than Jim, of course, but he was more of Tony’s brother). He had Tony’s love, respect, and, most importantly, his  _ trust _ .

 

Steve had all that and had almost killed Tony.

 

Pepper couldn’t say she understood where he was coming from. Not about the Accords, not about Barnes, not about anything. Tony hadn’t told her much, hadn’t had time to with how fast everything had happened. One minute, she was paralyzed in front of the TV as the  _ witch  _ dropped cars on him; the next, she was clinging to her phone and praying that he’d call. 

 

Tony had spent eighteen hours on the floor of the bunker where Steve left him. 

 

She didn’t know why; when Tony was awake, she’d make him tell her. She didn’t think it mattered. Nothing would have warranted leaving Tony behind in subzero temperatures, alone and bleeding. It had to have been bad, though; Tony wouldn’t have gone down without a fight, and he wouldn’t have fought Steve unless the man had done something truly terrible. 

 

Pepper stifled a sob in the silence of the hospital room. She had broken up with Tony because she couldn’t handle the helplessness, the waiting, being the one the bad news and condolences were delivered to. She had needed the space, when she did it. It was a lot, being with Tony. She loved him, always would, but he was hurting her when he hurt himself. She couldn’t help him when he wouldn’t take her help. She  _ tried _ , she did, but love wasn’t enough, sometimes. 

 

Now, though, it felt like a piece of her heart was being ripped out of her chest to see Tony lying prone and know that she had no right to press kisses to his cheeks and hold his hand when he was awake. She could be protective of him, but she couldn’t hold him close and whisper promises in his ear anymore. Even though she had needed it, breaking up with him had only made the helplessness worse.

 

Underneath the pain was anger. Fury, actually. This hadn’t been Tony backsliding on his promise to Pepper; it was Steve breaking  _ his _ . Steve had turned on his teammate, his  _ friend _ , and beaten the man he promised to protect into the ground. Pepper was beyond furious; she had tentative plans to ruin him in every way she knew how (and she knew a lot of ways). 

 

She was strongly considering tracking him down and using the suit she knew Tony made her to kick his ass. Only Tony’s rasping breaths on the ventilator stopped her. She couldn’t leave him broken and vulnerable and  _ alone _ . After everything, Tony deserved to wake up with someone at his side. However long it took, Pepper would be there when he woke up.

 

She pressed a careful kiss to his forehead and settled further into the uncomfortable hospital chairs. When they were together, she would climb into his bed, both of them desperate for touch to reaffirm that the other was okay. She wished she could still do that, if she was being honest. Seeing Tony still as the dead was not helping anything, but at least she could feel his weak pulse in the hand she clutched like a lifeline. She fluffed his pillow, instead, and stayed in her chair.

 

Pepper squeezed Tony’s hand harder, probably hard enough to bruise. When he woke up (and it was a  _ when _ , not an  _ if _ . He didn’t have her permission to die), they were going to have a long talk.

**Author's Note:**

> to touch on something before i get shit for it: pepper was not wrong to break up with tony, especially if it was hurting her. love isnt always enough; if tony wasnt getting the help he needed/taking what help she offered, her watching out for her own mental health doesnt make her the villain. its really hard, being the primary support for people with mental illnesses (support groups for this exist! if youre in this situation, reach out!) and pepper is not a bad person for recognizing that tony, at that point, was not good for her. that doesnt mean she loved him any less, or didnt care about his ptsd, or any of that. i welcome your discourse on this though so long as it remains civil
> 
> tl;dr: relationships take work on both sides
> 
> comments and kudos make me smile
> 
> prompt me!


End file.
